Petit the Poet's wisecrack about versifiers who prefer
trivial formalities to visionary singers is Masters' most famous critical statement. Petit
regrets his own concern with "little iambics" while he missed the tragedy and
heroism all around him. That sentiment recurs frequently in Masters' interviews and
essays, as well as his autobiography. It is also the kind of remark which gave him the
reputation of a quarrelsome man with explosive opinions. But on closer inspection,
Masters' seemingly spontaneous outbursts reveal a definite pattern. What appears to be
merely the anger of a cynic turns out to be penetrating insight on the state of poetry in
our culture in the first few decades of this century.

Masters often noted what he thought was wrong with the
literature of his time. He offered several choice remarks, for example, about the
"haughty exclusiveness" of many literati who gathered themselves into
"unctuous" and "pretentious" clubs and produced verse that was
"largely derivative and warmed over." He was very good at this kind of put-down,
but his observations offered much more than saucy commentaries about what was wrong with
America's poetry. His criticism traced what he found to be best in the American tradition
as he knew it. He sketched a theory of poetry based on the primacy of the visionary as
well as the necessity of realism.